Page 351 of Sticks and Stones
It amused both Gene and Ethan.
“Sorry about that. She’s my…girlfriend,” he stated. “For a lack of a better word.”
Well, that told them everything they needed to know about the woman. If he had to struggle to find the word to describe their relationship, she absolutely wasn’t his girlfriend.
Someone was having plenty of fun. Again, his parents had dropped the ball on that one.
“Anyway,” Gene said, sitting down, “do you live here alone, minus the quote unquote girlfriend?” he asked.
“Yeah, this is my pad.”
Well, then, they would get down to business.
Gene dove right in.
“I’m Special Agent Cantrell, and this is Special Agent Blackhawk. We’re aware you talked to a cop regarding yourneighbor, but we’ve been called in. Just answer the questions, and we’ll get out of your hair.”
He shrugged.
“I got nothing to hide. Hit me with it.”
So, he did.
“Tell us about the last time you saw Graham,” Gene stated.
Phillip cooperated.
“It was the day he went missing. He came over, and he was doing what he usually did. We liked to have coffee in the morning together. He taught a class around ten, and it’s a quick walk to class for him. I don’t have a class until after that, and since I don’t have a roommate, it was nice to have a friend to talk to every day.”
They let him replay it for them.
And they had to admit, he was telling them the exact same thing that he’d told Corbin.
Almost verbatim from Corbin’s notes.
“We talked about getting pizza that night. It was a Friday because Bunny was coming over.”
Ethan pointed at the room where the girl with the see-through shirt ran to a few minutes ago.
“And that’s Bunny?”
He laughed.
“Nah, that’s Sarah. She’s in my chem class. She’s tutoring me in chemistry.”
Uh, yeah, well, they were betting not a lot of tutoring went on.
“Bunny is a girl I met in Trig. She’s my Friday company. Sarah is more a Saturday night kind of girl. They are totally different personalities. Bunny, despite her name isn’t as much fun, but she’s hot, and that gets me street cred. She’s a ten plus on the babe-o-meter.”
This was giving Gene an even bigger headache than he had. In the back of his mind, he was thinking about the time.
Why?
Monday was less than twenty-four hours away, and that was likely when Javier was out on bail.
“I see,” said Ethan, sorry that he’d even gone there.
Gene was staring at the kid.
